


The Zombie Survival Guide

by facingthenorthwind (spacegandalf)



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 14:13:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacegandalf/pseuds/facingthenorthwind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Zombie Survival Guide was a laugh. It was a ridiculous work of fiction, and Abel residents enjoyed annotating its pages to point out all the ways it was wrong. Somewhere along the way, though, the Guide began to mean a little more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Zombie Survival Guide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [songforalonggoodbye](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=songforalonggoodbye).



> It is the 27th in Australia! My ZW prompt was from songforalonggoodbye, who wanted:
>
>>   
> There is a copy (well, actually, there are a few, because the runners think they're funny, but there's a certain one that's tradition) of The Zombie Survival Guide in the library. Various times Abel residents took a red pen to it.  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> This isn't  _exactly_ that prompt, but hopefully the spirit remains the same. It's in two parts: part 1 is the actual Zombie Survival Guide which I have annotated in red; and part 2 is a mini fic to go along with it. Part 1 can be found [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2zNvOTxkjxRZks2MlQ0WE92RlE/edit?usp=sharing) and part 2 is, well, this. It start out all happy! I thought I was going to write something that was a bundle of laughs and mild crack! But I was mistaken, because my hand slipped and now I'm sad.  
> 

i.  
Simon was the one who found it, of course. Or rather, the first copy. He’d been on a run for food supplies in the city and the book was on the floor in one of the storehouses. He wasn’t sure how it had got there, but he grabbed it, putting it in his backpack and telling Sam he had a surprise for him when he got back to base. Sam reminded him he didn’t like surprises.

ii.  
By the time the rocket launcher hit, they’d collected seven copies of _The Zombie Survival Guide_ , but the first copy was the one people fought over, bargaining and bartering for an opportunity to add their own voice to the much-graffitied pages. Just about everyone had written _something_ , whether it was Chris McShell criticising the author’s liberal use of the word ‘random’ or demanding peer-reviewed studies, or Janine making short, bitter comments about the book’s visions of the post-zombie world. The rocket launcher didn’t damage the library, so when things went back to normal (as normal as the world could be these days), the system resumed. A huddle of people could almost constantly be found in the library near the dog kennel, giggling and talking over each other as they pored over what was a frankly ridiculous “guide”. As if anyone had survived the apocalypse this way.

It became important in a way that very few things were after the apocalypse. The book became shorthand for, well, anything. After a particularly close shave on a mission which left Jody visibly shaking when she returned to base, Maxine pressed the book into her hand once she’d passed medical inspection, telling her not to take any missions for twenty-four hours. Sometimes, when Jack couldn’t get out of bed (couldn’t face the day, couldn’t face the daylight, couldn’t face the drawn haggard faces of people who had fought and murdered and sometimes came back covered in the blood of people they might have _known_ ), Simon left the _Guide_ and half a tin of peaches on the makeshift bedside table Jack was huddled next to. Simon never worked out if it helped, but he reasoned it couldn’t _hurt_. (When Eugene came back after the morning shift, having passed over to Phil and Zoe, he’d read it aloud, and sometimes Jack would make comments, even though Eugene couldn’t get Jack to look at him. Eugene wrote them in for him, but he stopped reading when Jack fell asleep.)

iii.  
The _Guide_ became, as most things did, a memorial. People died and the _Guide_ was one more way they could be remembered. At the beginning, it was all laughter and scoffing as people did dramatic readings of the more ridiculous passages (dramatic readings that were more popular than Rajit’s readings of his novel, about which he was endlessly bitter). As time went on, it became more common to find people leafing through the pages quietly, barely reading the actual printed text and instead searching the margins for the words of people they’d lost. Teenagers would frown as they read the commentary from names they didn’t recognise -- people they’d never met, but they knew better than to ask someone who would know. Some of them had made that mistake before, and it’s not one you make twice. (Sam had gone white as a sheet, almost dropping the mandarin segment he had been holding, and the teenager had just stammered an apology and left before he could say anything.)

When Jody was the only one left, she took the book and no one saw it for a month. When it reappeared there were no new annotations, but some of the old ones were smudged with tears. (There was no one to leave her half a tin of peaches.)


End file.
